Question:
What are the purposes of the post-processing color controls in the OLYMPUS Master Edit Palette?

Answer:
The Edit Palette in the Image Edit window of OLYMPUS Master has a number of options for modifying color in an image in post-processing. Digital images are made up of red, green and blue image data—think of them as channels. When software is used to modify the color in an image, it changes the relationship of these channels in terms of hue, brightness and saturation. The Image Edit window will display the original image and an image showing the results of the editing tools. Below are brief explanations of the color editing options.

• Color Balance allows control over the red, green and blue color channels. The positive side of the slider controls the red, green and blue values and the negative side of the slider controls their complimentary colors, cyan, magenta and yellow, respectively. This can be useful if you want to control specific colors in an image without affecting other colors, such as correction for shooting under mixed artificial lighting.
• Tone Curve allows control of the brightness and contrast of the red/green/blue (RGB) color gamut or the individual red, green and blue channels. The display shows a color histogram at the top of the window which displays the distribution of the color in terms of tones and contrast. There is also a gray histogram behind the tone curve display. The tone curve can be changed by placing the cursor on the red line and dragging it up or down from the red line. The lower left of the line is the shadow end and the upper right is the highlight end. The middle of the line represents the mid-tones. The line can be dragged at multiple points along the line for varying results.
• Gamma allows control of the overall contrast of the image. On the slider, negative values create low contrast and positive values create high contrast.
• Auto Tone Correction automatically sets the darkest value and the highest value and then uses a slider to adjust the brightness scale of the mid-tones between the two points. This can be useful to give a little more punch to a flat or under-exposed image.
• Hue & Saturation is used to adjust the overall color cast of an image. The Hue slider is used to select the color cast to apply to the image. The Saturation slider is used to control the intensity or depth of the color cast. The Lightness slider is used to adjust the brightness or darkness of the applied hue. This editing option can be used to correct for overall color balance or to change the mood of an image.
• Monochrome & Sepia enables removing the color from a color image. The Monochrome option converts an image to black and white and allows control of the contrast of the image. The Sepia option converts a color image to a sepia tone image and allows control over the warmth or coldness of the sepia tone.

---

---

Submit your question using the form below and we may feature it in our next edition!

Please note: Questions submitted to Olympus will not receive individual responses.

If you have a specific tech support issue for which you need immediate assistance, please contact our technical support group by sending an email to distec@cs.olympus.com, or by calling 1-888-55-DIGITAL.